Chris Hughton planned to allow himself one torturous evening before picking through the remnants of City's poor start to his Premier League era at the club.

The Canaries' chief will return to work this morning armed with a better understanding of what triggered the Canaries' 5-0 collapse at Craven Cottage after what he forecast was set to be a miserable Saturday night stewing over events in south-west London. Hughton planned to sit through Norwich's heavy defeat yesterday to understand just how things went so wrong.

'I'll have a bad night tonight. Go through the video two or three times and pull out the things that I need to,' said Hughton, prior to boarding the team coach at Craven Cottage.

'We will have a meeting with the players on Monday and everything that we need to deal with we will deal with there. Then that's closed and we have to move on to the next game.

'We of course said what we had to say in the changing room. There is no doubt it is a fairly down changing room, but the work starts Monday. You need time now to reflect, players need time to reflect.

'I need time to go over the video again. We'll go through it with the players on Monday and we start again. Those players will be hurting. I know they will because they are good characters.

'We know we are going to have defeats and part of this season is going to be about picking everybody up from defeats.

'What you don't want in your first day is as big as one as this. That is the division. If you don't play well enough there are numerous teams that can really help.'

Fulham counterpart Martin Jol expressed sympathy for his old Tottenham assistant following the Cottagers' scintillating display, but Hughton admitted City had made it far too easy for the Dutchman to get off to a flying start.

'I've shaken hands with him, but we haven't had a chance to speak. He will be very pleased as his team played very well and they were very clinical,' said Hughton.

'He has done a wonderful job – he has got some good players, very strong and it was a combination today of them being good and us being poor that led to that outcome.'